What We Do To Survive
by BrokePerception
Summary: Set after 3.07 The Long Game. She felt the most desire to make a change for people like Francesca Doyle, whose past traumas had lead to their crimes more than any malicious intent and who were too intelligent to be considered hopeless like everyone else who had once done jail time. Fridget


She knew she had to put it down in a report. Only she didn't, for how could she betray the inmate's confidence when it had taken that long to gain it?

After several years of working in prison, Bridget Westfall knew that incarceration as a penance didn't help most. While it minimized someone's freedom, as it was supposed to do, the subjective way in which prison staff treated inmates often caused extra penance for the less powerful. She knew that subjectivity existed in most places, and that it left its scars, as well as the endless battle for the top dog position. Regardless of pressures from the staff or not, Bridget had learned that the power fields that existed among inmates had a far more durable and harsh influence on the prison population. They got pushed to do things they wouldn't have while free, regardless of the actions that had put them in jail ── if only to be able to survive for the duration of their penance. Weakness was the worst within the prison walls after all.

Prison was symbolic, she knew, to make society appear and feel like a safer place. When she began her studies, she had believed that incarceration was, as society had taught her as well, the best retribution, but then when she continued to study and started her career, then especially when she built it, she saw it for what it was. While imprisoned, the criminal couldn't really damage society, but once released, how the hell was he or she supposed to just integrate flawlessly in what they hadn't been a part of for as long as their prison time lasted?

Very often, she felt like she made no difference. The reason why she kept the job was the knowledge that she did for some, and for them, that small difference was one between life... and death. Quite literally, sometimes. She felt the most desire to make a change for people like Francesca Doyle, whose past traumas had lead to their crimes more than any malicious intent and who were too intelligent to be considered hopeless like everyone else who had once done jail time. Unfortunately, upon release, for most people, you didn't lose your label of criminal. It was, however, so that it was impossible to make any kind of difference for anyone in a prison when her efforts were countered by the governor, like in Wentworth Correctional Centre.

It had been a narrow escape, for sure. When the governor called her into her office and appeared to have questions about Franky and hers sessions ── to which she had responded that nothing special had happened at all ── and then when she played the tape, Bridget Westfall had felt the freak's breath in her neck more than ever, and she had realized more than ever as well that all the things Jodie and Bea and others had said about her, although she had had suspicions about the governor's kosher leadership before already, were true.

She had left her office in quite a panic of sorts, after the governor had stated that she should get her things before media came and ruined her entire career... only to be surprised by Fletch as he walked to her office, with hope that was nearly tangible to take the freak down. With his regained memory as well as Bridget's own knowledge and logic, the board and the police had agreed that all allegations from Joan Ferguson towards Bridget or anyone for that matter were really too doubtful to investigate in light of her methods and the way she had ruled Wentworth as governor. With the many accusations that had been directed at her and their seriousness, the board hadn't had another choice but to let the matter be investigated thoroughly... and what they found had been undeniable. With her very complex, very serious, psychological disorders in mind, the intimidation she seemed to crave and the lies she told to make things go her way, she would go to quite another kind of correctional centre than Wentworth.

To deny that she, too, had a way to intimidate and used her knowledge of the human mind to do so would be naive. She wouldn't call it that way, though. She fought for what she thought was right and didn't let herself be stopped easily. She had ensured that Vera Bennett, easier to intimidate than the former Wentworth governor, had signed all the papers necessary to get Franky up for parole with logic and simple fact that way. So it happened that several weeks after Ferguson's dramatic departure, Francesca Doyle was a free woman, determined never to end up in prison again.

"I know it isn't much, but it will do for now, until you have a steady job and can find a better place. I ensured you could break the contract at any time, without repercussions."

The former inmate turned and eyed her with her, by now familiar, cheeky gaze. Her light green eyes were highlighted by her dark mascara, eyeliner and eye shadow as usual, and it highlighted the intensity they held as well. Intense way maybe the best word used to describe Francesca Doyle. She had a way about her to persuade, to get people to do what she wanted ── especially women ── and Bridget had heard rumors of how she had succeeded with Erica Davidson, and she had noted with her own two eyes how she had with several fellow inmates as well. She knew she herself had fallen prey, too.

The raven-haired woman was incredibly perceptive, and she had put the finger on the wound when she reminded Bridget of exactly how she reacted when she was near her. It would have been rather impossible not to be aware of her reaction. She had done her very best to hide it, but apparently she had failed at that. Apparently, her attempts to make Franky and the others believe that she was only interested in seeing that Franky ── too good and too intelligent of a person to waste her life in a prison any longer than really necessary ── followed a better path had failed quite miserably.

"As long as it isn't Wentworth, it is fine enough," Franky responded. Then she nodded towards the double bed that stood in the corner, and she wiggled her eyebrows. "Had anything in mind with that one, eh?" she suggested as she neared the older blonde, until there was barely a hair's width of space left between them. She reveled in the way she saw the psychiatrist's breath hitch and heart rate quicken. She latched her eyes onto Bridget's pulse point and held her gaze there for a second before she looked away, in a stormy blue.

Bridget Westfall turned Franky on in a way that Kim or Erica or any woman never had in her entire life. The women she had had, had mostly been toys, but Bridget was the one prey that she wanted to have and not let go of, who made her lose interest in everything and in everyone else. Right here, right now, with no cameras or screws to watch for inappropriate relationships, in the studio that Bridget had arranged for her, with Bridget so close to her, she knew she _had_ to take what she had longed to for a long, long time.

As she placed her small hands on the psychiatrist's hipbones, she enjoyed the tiny gasp that left thin pink lips, and when she saw them part, she couldn't resist anymore. She pushed the older blonde back until she had her pinned in-between herself and the wall. She felt the way their curves molded together, and her lips touched Bridget's, crashed down on them with an urgency that she hadn't really imagined could be so intense.

At first, Bridget fought against it, but then she realized that it was useless to try to resist Franky Doyle, and she just gave in. Franky hadn't exactly kept her interest in the blonde a secret. It had been rather clear since day one how she felt about Bridget Westfall, and Bridget... well, Bridget's own attraction for the former inmate had hit hard and fast just as well.

The board had requested that Franky continued therapy after her release, and Bridget had agreed to continue to see her herself... and she knew Franky would have taken every chance to try and try and try until she had gotten what she wanted. She could, of course, have ensured they met only in public places, and she could have made other endless efforts... but why would she try so hard to stop the inevitable, when she secretly wanted it to happen as well?

Franky smiled in the kiss as she felt Bridget struggle at first, then respond in kind. The blonde's pink lips tasted just as sweet as the cook had imagined all that time. She felt her desire to get to Bridget's skin intensify, and she began to pluck at the dark fabrics that hugged her curves so perfectly. She moaned when she felt silken softness, as she had imagined the older woman's milky white skin to be underneath her greedy fingertips.

When they were half undressed, Franky had lost all patience. In a fluid motion, she pulled them away from the blue-painted wall and walked them to the double bed that stood in the far corner, where she pushed the blonde down on the thick mattress and straddled her very swiftly. She ascertained her dominance immediately as she pinned one of Bridget's wrists down, beside her head. With her right hand, she pushed the pre-shaped fabric of the woman's deep red bra down and bent her head and latched onto her newly-exposed nipple. This way, she gave the Master in Psychology a very good idea of the pleasure she was in for later, when that talented mouth moved down, between her spread legs.

In prison, it had had to be quick and hurried. Right this moment, with Bridget, no longer caged, she took her time. She didn't stop when the woman hit her orgasm, nor did she let her own weakened self stop her when Bridget returned the gesture. She loved the way Bridget's body arched up, against her, and how she felt her inner walls grip her curled fingers. She loved the way her nails left red marks on pristine skin and how the roughness made her hiss in ecstasy.

The sun had already set when Bridget finally lowered her tired and shaky body onto the raven-haired former inmate, despite the fact that Franky had been released early that afternoon. She had ridden her fingers until she came, skin heated and sweaty, hearts racing, bodies quivering, breaths hitching. "This... has to stay secret for now," Bridget managed in a shaky voice once she felt she had it a little more under her control.

"If this is my reward for my silence, I won't say a word..." Francesca Doyle answered with trademark cheek.

Bridget lifted her brow, amused. She couldn't help but smile at Franky's words. This was the one whose whole life she would be able to change, for the better. Whatever happened in the meantime, whether they ended up in bed together again or not, she would take it as it came.


End file.
